March 2001
The following letter refers to Tom
Keating’s Cc: column in the January issue of Communications
Solutions:
Dear Mr. Keating,
I was just going through Communications Solutions™ and read your
article on “Build A Better Shopping Site With VoIP.” I was pleasantly
surprised to see the portion of the article that mentioned Softfront. I am
very grateful and appreciate the reference.
Being a new player in this space in the U.S. market has been a
challenge, but 2000 was a productive year. We are still seeing a very “young”
market that is well versed in VoIP technology and its potential, but the
vast majority have yet to match their enthusiasm with a check.
Additionally, Softfront has become a Siebel Premier Software Partner.
We are currently involved in a project to bundle Siebel’s Call Center
Application and eService Application with KISARA to provide VoIP and Web
collaboration tools. We hope to start the Siebel Validation Process
shortly and debut the KISARA for Siebel product in late Q1.
Jason J. Semerad
Senior Manager, Sales & Marketing
Softfront
The following letter refers to Carol
Drzewianowski’s Corporate Solutions section introduction, “Extending
The Reach Of UM,” in the February issue of Communications
Solutions:
Dear Ms. Drzewianowski,
I read with interest your section in the February issue on unified
messaging and the integration of UM with the voice portal as unified
communications grows in popularity. I think you’re right -- until now,
unified messaging in many ways has been the killer app that couldn’t.
But I wonder how much of that is because people have been coming at it
from the wrong angle. That is, they have been expecting businesses to
piece it together on their employee desktops, rather than service
providers to make it available to everyone -- end users and businesses,
in general.
The burden of integration is a heavy one for a business... especially a
small business, to bear. But it has great benefits and more easily fits
into a service provider model. Service providers bring the added benefits
that you write about -- mobility, text-to-speech, and so on.
Of course, portals and WAP aren’t just for service providers, but
with the growth (and growth predictions) of the ASP market, outsourcing
unified messaging (and unified communications) seems like a very natural
move -- especially for smaller businesses who don’t have the resources
to focus on core competencies and have cutting edge communications.
Your first sentence is key: remember how simple it once seemed. As
simple as it seemed, that’s how simple it will have to be to really take
off. Thanks for your insights.
William Metcalf
Waltham, MA
Carol Drzewianowski responds:
Dear Mr. Metcalf,
Thank you for your letter. I think one of the real benefits of unified
communications (as opposed to unified messaging) is that unified
communications goes one step beyond and doesn't just throw all of your
messages into one pile. Instead, it provides users with IP-based
real-time, two-way call and notification services, all combined with voice
mail, e-mail, and fax in a single message store.
The real key is ease of interoperability between all modes of
communications. Considering that many businesses (both large and small)
must contend with increased Internet e-mail traffic, wireless
communications, and (of course) phones that seem to never stop ringing,
many are looking for a way to corral these types of communications in a
way that allows them to better manage their availability and access to
different types of information, both on- and off-line. We'll see whether
or not unified communications might be "the killer app that
could."
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